


Sometimes

by raa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 14:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12819816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raa/pseuds/raa
Summary: The friend Ron's asked over is not Harry.





	Sometimes

The friend Ron's asked over is not Harry.

Hermione ought to have known. Harry's never liked mornings. He often says the one thing he doesn't miss about Hogwarts is early morning Quidditch. At this very instant, he's probably batting red hair out of his face as a grinning, suited-up Ginny leans over to kiss him goodbye, and grumbling good-naturedly about it all the while. How many mornings has Hermione done the same, lolling in the warm spot just vacated while Ron shuffles around, whistling cheerfully, rustling the _Prophet_ , and saying, "Gee, golly, Hermione, have you heard about this?"

Hermione frowns and focuses on the matter at hand: Draco Malfoy on her doorstep, blond hair against black overcoat, wind-reddened cheeks against pale skin.

"He's not up," she says.

"I…" Malfoy blinks, clears his throat. His eyes slide off her and land somewhere on the snowbank. "Weasley said—"

"—he'd be up and ready to go. Yes. Well. You better come in because he's not."

"I'll come back."

"And go where?" says Hermione waspishly. She knows it's not his fault he's not Harry, but he's still got his face averted, as if it's too much to even look at her. "Out to the Cauldron to join the late-night stragglers?" She bites back the rest and steps back, motions impatiently. "Come in, before we both freeze to death. I'll get you some tea and hopefully Ron will be up before you've finished."

He obeys. When he stops in front of the hallway mirror, shedding gloves and coat, Hermione catches sight of herself. That, at least, explains Malfoy's discomfort. The bathrobe's a little flimsy, but, in her defense, it wasn't so farfetched to think it was _Harry_ knocking on the door this morning. It’s just like Ron to fail to mention who was really coming when he stumbled in last night—more a failure of nerve than memory, if she knows him.

She checks herself. None of that now.

"Remind me, Malfoy," she says, "how you like your tea? It's Assam, yes?"

 

* * *

 

"You needn't have," says Malfoy, when Hermione carries in the tea tray, one quick change of clothes and a stop in the kitchen later. "I'm sure Weasley—"

"No, I really needed to—it's freezing." She lets the warmth of the cup seep into her hands until her fingers finally regain some dexterity, then spells a table into existence with a wave of her hand.

"You don't mind, do you?” she says, mostly out of courtesy, after summoning a stack of letters from her room. “There's the new _Potions & Prophets _if you'd like to read, or you can help yourself…" She waves at the wall of books, and watches Malfoy glance round. It's a small little room, but she loves it so, with its two-tone walls, the gray slate of the floor, and the small window seat overlooking the ever-flowering lavender their neighbor keeps.

"So that's all from this morning?" He's looking at her makeshift desk now.

"Unfortunately."

"Even over the holidays on a Sunday, eh? Weasley wasn't lying."

"About what?" She grips her cup, taking in a large breath of sweet steam, and regrets her question: it sounds so accusatory.

"Your work,” he replies lightly. “It really—well I suppose that's how it is with these things. Father used to..."

"Yes, your father used to?"

Malfoy coughs, looks down. "He had the house-elves take the letters at night..."

"Yes, they do rather like their midnight owls at the Ministry," she says. "Took me a while, actually, but I spelled the window. It's a relief, I'll say, to actually sleep through the night."

He whistles from high to low. "Impressive."

She waves a dismissive hand. "It's nothing. The tricky part's in the gesture, to tie the verification. In Lindstrand's _Grasping Glass_ —you've read it, yes?"

"No," he says, "We may have it... I'll have to look for it. You think that's the difficulty? Not—I'm assuming it was set-timing you used?"

"Drat," she laughs. "Yes, set-timing's always a problem. But last year..." She drifts off, having remembered it's Malfoy she's talking to. "Are you actually interested?"

"Of course."

The funny thing is, it really seems he is. He’s uncrossed his legs, and leaned forward, his eyes wide and serious. For a moment, she’s tempted, but a vision of Harry jumping up in the middle of her explanation about this very spell last week, and the sound of Ron's big, great laugh— _that's our busy Hermione at work!_ —rises up in her mind.

“I'm sure I'd make a mess of it," she says lightly. "I'll have Ron... Well, I'll owl you a few books with the relevant passages outlined, would that do?"

Malfoy sits back, and fingers the corners of the _Witch Weekly_ on the table. "I understand," he says in a low voice, and she blinks. What is there to understand? Then Malfoy licks his lips, and continues, in a more even tone, "But yes, I'd like that very much, thank you. And please, don't let me intrude..." He nods at scattered parchment.

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later, there's still no sound from upstairs.

Malfoy has been shifting around an awful lot, his chair creaking with each move. Hermione glances at him guiltily.

“I’m sorry about this. I’d go wake him up, but…”

“It’s fine,” says Malfoy, setting the _Prophet_ down across his lap to meet her eyes. “I know Weasley’s a sound sleeper.”

That’s a good save, she thinks. “Yes,” she agrees.

“So”—he folds up the paper and drops it on the table beside him—”how’re your holidays?”

"They're…" The lie dies at the tip of her tongue. There's no use: Malfoy already knows. He was out with Ron last night, after all. "Eventful, I guess," she says, with a laugh.

"Eventful."

"Oh, come on," she says. "You can't not know. Isn't that why you're here?"

There's a blank look on his face, and she can't tell if it's just politeness making him feign ignorance.

"Ron and I—we… we broke up on Friday."

There's a long pause. Malfoy leans back, his eyes on Hermione's face. "How are you feeling?"

Hermione stares at him.

"There's always two sides to a break-up," says Malfoy, suddenly turning his face and clenching his jaw. She studies his patrician profile and the lines on his face. He looks old, Malfoy, with his mouth set in that hard line, and she can’t for the life of her remember the last time Malfoy was even seen on a date.

“So you really don’t know,” she says, when he resolutely refuses to go on from that cryptic statement.

He scowls. "Of course I didn’t know. Otherwise"—amazingly, his cheeks are flushed—"well I'd have been more prepared to say”—here, he sneers—”the right things."

"Well, I don't want you to say anything," Hermione snaps. She hears her own tone, and pauses to take a deep breath. "In particular, that is."

"No?"

"What would you have told Ron?"

"I'm sorry to hear it."

There’s a beat, before Hermione realizes he’s answering her question, not giving her delayed condolences. "That's what you would have told Ron?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"But—not me."

"I'm friends with Weasley," he says, and a look of mortification passes over his face immediately. "That is—I’m just more confident that's what he'd like to hear."

"This is a little silly, isn't it? Us sitting here." Hermione pushes the table away, rising, and it scrapes against the floor. "Ron won't like me waking him up, but he'll like it more than you waiting here for who knows how long. I'll fetch him for you."

Malfoy rises too, and there's a dull red tinge in his cheeks. "There's really no need."

"You know how he is," Hermione replies. "Help yourself to some more tea, Malfoy. It'll be another quarter hour at least."

 

* * *

They're gone before dinner, all of Ron's things magicked and carted out. Ron owns a surprising number of nice things that don't interact well with magic, and these have been painstakingly carried down by hand. When their voices die down, Hermione emerges from her half of the bedroom—she'll take down the temporary wall later—and takes a deep breath.

The house chimes—there's someone at the door. Surely Harry…?

It's Malfoy. Again.

"I'm sorry," he says, "but I can't seem to find my gloves… " He holds up his bare hands.

"Right."

A few attempts to summon them don’t work. They were his father’s, apparently, and there’s probably some stupid Anti-Theft Charm on them.

“Guess we’ll have to do this the Muggle way,” he says, and then he stops walking, abruptly. “I’m sorry.”

Hermione snorts. “You think I don’t hear that from Ron every other day? Or even Harry?”

“But you don’t like it.”

“I—” She shrugs, and slips by his still form in the corridor, turning at the door for the kitchen. “Come on, they won’t find themselves.”

“Found them,” he calls from the drawing room when she’s only just finished looking through the first kitchen drawer. “Tucked in your armchair. It’s a very comfortable chair—and I did sit there a while.”

"I'm just glad they're not somewhere in Ron's things,” she says, joining him. “You’d have had a nightmare looking through all those boxes, unshrinking them.”

"It's sort of like him, isn't it?" he says absently. "Tells you he needs you to come over at sunrise the next day, and then ropes you into…"

"So he really didn't say—not even what he needed you to do?"

"Well… I don't think he had it planned, really. He was a bit pissed and all, when he asked."

"And you showed up anyway. That's nice."

His mouth twitches, and he shoves a hand in a pocket. "I've a large place—it'll be nice to have company."

"He's moving in with _you_?"

"Well—” Malfoy’s face is flushed, again. “For now. It wasn’t—well, it was all a bit of an improvisation."

The laugh that comes out of Hermione startles her: she sounds old, and not herself. "I suppose it's not as if he'd like to live with Harry, and he wouldn't go back to the Burrow. Well, don't worry. He's a good enough roommate. Just make sure he doesn't—"

"Yes?"

"He's not good with Muggle appliances," she says, shortly. "But I don't imagine it'll matter."

"Actually… Is there anything he likes, that he might miss? I’m sorry to bother you about this, but I'd rather he... feel comfortable."

Hermione blinks. Then she summons the Nespresso and that stupid crate of capsules. "Have you got a plug? Yes? All right then. Here. He loves the thing. Just don't tell him it's mine, will you?"

"I won't," says Malfoy, with surprising solemnity. He fumbles around in his right pocket, and then holds out a nicely bowed bag of exquisitely thin candy canes. “Can you hold this? Wouldn’t want to crush them.”

Hermione examines the beautiful, millimeter-thick swirls as Malfoy shrinks the Nespresso and crate, and slips them into that same pocket.

Patting it, he grins. “Weasley won’t know what hit him.”

It’s nice, to think of Ron waking up tomorrow and being jolly over the Nespresso. _Gee, golly Malfoy—_ the smile on Hermione’s face dies. She looks down, and, seeing the candy canes, offers them back to Malfoy. 

"Actually, they’re for you.” He gives her a wry grin. “I bought them a few weeks back, thought they’d be perfect for—the two of you. But Weasley..."

But Ron Weasley hates candy canes, and Hermione loves them so. Hermione can feel her own face heating up: everyone knows how Ron feels about them, so it’s a present for her, really. Malfoy must have left the gloves here on purpose, to get a chance to do this without Ron hanging around.

But how did he know?

"I pay attention, sometimes," he says, smiling, and Hermione’s a little surprised to find she’d spoken the question aloud. "I'm thankful, you know, for... well..."

"Guess my secret's out," she says, lightly.

"Your secret's safe with me," he says, face perfectly serious, and eyes fixed on her face.

She stares back, wordless. Then he gives her a sharp nod. “Take care, Granger.”

"Wait!" she calls, coming to her senses and catching the door as it’s about to close. The sleek black figure at the end of the path half-turns, that grim profile outlined by the setting sun. "I—thank you, Malfoy."

He raises a hand. "Happy Christmas, Granger."

 

* * *

 

It's not easy losing your boyfriend to Draco Malfoy. Sure, the writing's been on the wall for ages. But you date your man for six years—eight if you count the two before you broke up the first time, and then one sunny spring day he comes back from the weekly Quidditch match, and he says, "I met someone we used to know.” Before you know it every time he's out, he's out with _them,_ and half a year later, you're done, and he's left your place, moved in with _them_ instead.

Amazingly, she's seen Ron not at all since the break-up. Malfoy, however, is everywhere. At the Friday night get-togethers at the Hog’s Head, Malfoy is there, trading barbs with Aberforth. He brings his friends, too. Pansy—always with just the right touch of eyeshadow and that sharp, sly smile; Goyle, whose adolescent heft has settled into a sort of comfortable, filled-out man shape. It makes sense, in a way: Ron's avoiding her, but Malfoy's got no reason to, and now that he's got all the same friends, it seems, it's inevitable now that they'll meet.

In the summer, he's at the Weasley Sunday dinner, and he has the whole stack of books she owled to him back in December.

"I'm terribly sorry I kept them so long," he explains. "But I still can’t figure out how you tie them together. You said it was _one_ spell?”

Before long, she and Malfoy have cleared Arthur’s gadgets off the table and are experimenting. When Molly calls for dinner, they sit next to each other and sketch out diagrams, with Bill chiming in, and when the pie is served, they take it back out to the drawing room.

Fleur sweeps in at a quarter past nine, Victorie in her arms. “So _here_ you are,” she says.

“Well, that’s me,” Bill says wryly, rising. “Seems Fleur can’t take much more, even if _I_ want to stay.”

“Not me,” replies Fleur, hefting Victorie up and down once for emphasis. “You know I love a late night. Now, Hermione"—she unloads Victorie on Bill—"Ginny says she is free, and if _she_ can make it… We’ll steal out to the nude beach, and drive around in the sun in a Ferrari just like all the best Muggles. Say you’ll come.”

“I’ll think about it,” Hermione says firmly, knowing she won’t go.

“Well..." Fleur sighs. She takes Hermione hands and kisses her on both cheeks. “Ta-ta, darling.” With that, she takes Bill’s hand, and the three of them disappear with a green _Bang!_

"You should go," says Malfoy, and Hermione realizes with a start that he’s standing right beside her. "Windy mountain roads, long sunny days in southern France… in a Ferrari…"

“You like driving?”

He shakes his head. “Weasley won’t trust me yet. But soon.”

“Dear god,” she says, “don’t let _him_ teach you. Harry’s much safer.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that. But why aren't you going?"

“What?”

"Fleur’s—”

“Oh, that.” She leans down and starts gathering all the electronics they pushed off the table. If Arthur’s been messing with them, she’s not sure they’ll play nicely with magic.

Malfoy kneels down, too, and collects a few spare parts. “Yes, why aren't you going?"

"You know how it is. It's a dozen things to finish before August, and then a mad catch-up while everyone else is on holiday."

"But I thought you loved Provence.”

She glances at him: Malfoy is holding very still, like he’s said something wrong. "Well, yes,” she says. “But how did you—"

His mouth twists. "I pay attention, sometimes, you know," he says in a hard tone.

She thinks of the last time he said that, of the long, thin candy canes in the tall kitchen jar by the small window. There’s six more, and she’s saving them. They’re that good.

"Did Ron tell you about—how I love candy canes?"

"No, actually," says Malfoy. His voice is now very cool. “I overheard you once. One of the times you came by the Wheezes, talking about the canes over at Madame Puddifoot’s, how thin they were. Weasley thought they were revolting, of course, and that they came from Puddifoot’s..."

The memory rises up in her mind, but she has to think over it twice to remember Malfoy deliberating over some fake wands behind her. “Well,” she says, “you should tell me where you got them.”

“I don’t think so. It's a secret,” he replies, still in that oddly neutral voice. “But I’ll bring you more next year. Deal?”

 

* * *

 

Draco Malfoy slips in the door to the bar just as Hermione looks up, and she can't help but feel relieved—that group by the dirty window have been throwing her empty booth dirty looks for the past quarter hour.

"Early," he says, sliding in across her.

"Couldn't take it any longer at the office. Nothing like a Friday."

"Ready to get smashed?"

"Me? Never."

"Oh? So that wasn't you last week with the—"

"That was all Harry."

"That's a challenge, I think," he says, topping off her glass. "Come now, cheers."

An hour later, it's still only them—Harry's been sent out, and Ginny's out to dinner with Pansy, and they'll be late. She's not sure where Ron is, until Malfoy supplies that: he's on a date.

"That's nice," she says. "Very nice. Is she—nice?"

Malfoy shrugs. "She's someone, that's a start." He sits up. "Not to mean—"

"It's fine. You can imagine what I hear from Molly every week."

He grins. "Yes, after living with Weasley for ten months, I rather think I can."

"Molly'll be over the moon."

"I don't know about that. Izzy—that’s her—she'll have a lot to measure up to."

"Well, I—”

"I'm sorry," he says, quickly.

"No, it's fine," says Hermione. "You know, I'm glad in a way. It makes me feel less _left_ in a way. Which is ridiculous, because he didn't even leave me. We just, we just sort of fell apart. But it's still—how I feel."

"Left? How so?"

"Well… well, we both knew it wasn't—it wasn't what Harry and Ginny have, you know?” The bar’s so loud, she has to shout, but strangely it feels right, to shout it. “But we muddled along, and it was fine, until he became friends with you. And then it was Quidditch, and trips to old wizarding Rome, and all that old stuff. Every week, it was something _new_ , something it seemed like only you could show him, being a Malfoy… something I didn't know because—"

Malfoy's hand shoots out and covers hers, and he leans in. "Don't," he says softly, looking pained. "I'm sorry."

"No, no," she says, shaking her hand free. "It's who you are, and I'm not ashamed. Your family's old, rich magic—it's what you could do to make your friend happy. I resented it then, but it’s just how it is. My parents are Muggles—there's things I could have shown him. And Ron… He liked some of it—cars, the Nespresso, but it wasn't—his, you know? There was always a gap."

"A gap."

"I don't blame him. He didn't know—I guess we both didn't. But he couldn't have known what he was signing up for."

"And what's that?"

It's not something Hermione has explained before, she realizes with a start. But who could she have told? Not her parents—not Ginny or Luna or Fleur, who wouldn't have understood. And not Harry, who would have understood, but would have felt awful about it. "When I was… when we were at Hogwarts, I, well—it was new to me. I wanted to know… everything about wizards. I suppose I thought if I could learn everything, _know_ everything, then I'd really show—" She stops abruptly, and sits back. This is still Draco Malfoy she's talking to, even if he's—well, a smiling face at Weasley dinners, and Ron's roommate, and the person who makes George laugh most nowadays.

"You thought you'd really show me and mine and all the other people like me.”

"I—yes."

All around them are loud, happy people full of _Friday_ jollies shouting and singing. “I’ve never—” Malfoy clears his throat, and starts, louder, because there’s no choice if he wants her to hear what he’s saying, “I never did apologize, did I? Just—didn’t know how, which is worse. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for—everything. Weasley says—"

"It's not the same as with Ron.” She doesn’t really know, now that she’s spoken, if she wants more of an apology or less. “It was a long time ago, in any case.”

"That's not an excuse." HIs voice has gone hard again, like that time at the Burrow.

“Well,” she says bracingly, “Merlin knows I was _awful_ too. A terrible brat. Anyways, that’s not to say you were—the reason we broke up, you know. You were just—a convenient manifestation of everything wrong with us, everything we couldn't—bridge over. You asked me once, how I felt, remember? Well, I'm glad. If there's anything I regret, it's that it rather put you in an awkward situation. You couldn’t have known, and I was so angry that you—"

"I knew what I was doing," he said, and the catch in his voice makes Hermione really look at him. “I knew that you and Weasley—”

There's something wrong with Malfoy: his face is pale, and he fumbles with his glass when he tries to pick it up.

"What's wrong?" she says.

"Nothing—well, I've got to go. I’m sorry." His face flushes, and between that, and his pale face, he looks incredibly unwell. “For all of it—at Hogwarts, at… the Manor, for coming between you and Weasley…” He swipes a few Galleons out from a pocket, drops them, and pushes off the booth.

"Wait,” she says, shifting over to catch him. “Wait, Draco—"

He turns around abruptly, staring at her. "Yes?"

"If you're not feeling well—"

A large, self-mocking smile comes onto his face, though Hermione can’t imagine why. "I feel fine," says Malfoy, contrary to all evidence. "Please, make my excuses—something that—well, we can't have Weasley rushing back when he checks in after his date."

"I can do that," says Hermione, since he obviously won't accept anything else.

He nods. "Thanks—Hermione," he says. "For—everything."

The words are out before she realizes how much she means them: “Take care of yourself.”

 

* * *

 

Ron's new girl _is_ nice. She's blonde, and demure, and there's a sharp brain behind that placid look. Hermione's jealous—not _that_ way—but because she's always admired those characters in books. The still, quiet ones who don't look much until you know them.

After dinner, Ron comes back to Grimmauld Place, and hugs her and Harry both tight. "I'm glad you loved her," he says. "I was—"

"There was never anything to be scared of," Hermione says.

"Never?" Ron says. "When I first started hanging with Malfoy, Harry—"

"I was wrong, all right, I admit it! Yes, I like Draco," cries Harry. "Fine! You have my blessing, Ronald Weasley, to befriend anyone you take a shine too. When's the wedding?"

"She's lovely, she really is,” Hermione says, laughing along with Harry. “And whip-smart."

"Now _that's_ a compliment, from our Hermione.” Ron grins a little stupidly into the window, and then turns, abruptly. "Say, Hermione, you don't mind Malfoy, do you?"

"Hm?"

"You don't mind him… at our parties and such, right?"

It's Ron to a tee: considerate, when he thinks of it. "He _has_ been a regular at these things for the past half year, at least," she says slowly.

He flushes. "I'm sorry—"

Hermione laughs. “I’m just teasing. It's nice—he’s nice. New faces are nice."

"Nice," says Ron, trailing off, and shares a look with Harry that Hermione doesn’t understand. "Well, that's good."

 

* * *

 

At the Menagerie, there's twenty different cats, and none of them as clever or good as Crookshanks, who is old and cranky now, and could dearly use a friend. But a friend she has promised him, and a friend she will bring him.

"Hermione," says a voice, and it's Malfoy, in green with a red bowtie, and somehow looking very charming all the same.

"Malfoy!" she says, cheerily. She hasn't seen him since that night at the Hog’s Head. "Well, which of these lot do you think Crookshanks—Malfoy, are you all right?" She glances behind her to see what it is that's made him stiffen, but there's no one there.

"I'm fine," says Malfoy, smiling weakly. "I always seem to be saying that around you, don't I? But I am."

"Don't let it get to you," she says, remembering the  _Prophet_ this morning. "We all have to live. Tearing down a person doesn't—tear down a system."

"Is that so?" he says.

"Harry's rich as Croesus, too, but no one at the _Prophet_ is ever on him. Yes, yes, it's _Harry_. But—”

“Have you told _him_ that?”

“Of course!” she says, and then reddens. “I’ll admit: I was a little rude.”

“What’d you say?” he says, grinning.

“Well, it was when—back when you and Ron were just becoming friends, and Harry… well, in any case, I told him, _all old wizarding money’s the same, even yours_.”

“You really think so.”

“Of course,” she replies, warming to the subject. “You think the Potters got rich simply letting their Galleons multiply at Gringotts? They did it like all the rest of you: house-elves and stolen magical goods, Confunding Muggles, and ripping off all the poor Muggle-borns who hadn’t known better. It’s all blood money, if you ask me. Quite literally.”

“Blood money.”

Hermione starts. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean—” But Malfoy’s put a hand on her arm, which he drops when she looks at him.

“Don’t,” he says. “It’s true enough—at least of the Malfoys. The rest… you’ve looked into, haven’t you? But you would have…”

There’s a look in Malfoy’s eyes—haunted and serious—that Hermione can’t quite tear her gaze away from. “Yes,” she says, gathering her thoughts, “so you see, it’s not—it isn’t just _you_. It’s, well it’s everything.”

"But, as they say," he says, quietly, "the Potters did their penance."

"I don't much like that form of penance,” she says, sharply. “So your last name's Malfoy—so what? It's not what your last name is; it's what you do with it."

"I know what I did with it," he says, looking her straight in the face. "Me, Draco Malfoy."

"I know that, too. And I'm telling you—it's not what you did. It's what you do next."

He blinks a few times, and then says rapidly, almost too fast for comprehension "What if it doesn’t measure up?"

"Does it matter what I think?” she retorts. She takes a deep breath. “Look—we can’t—surely you know that we can’t be your judge and jury? Only you can."

"I—” he pauses, swallows. “Yes, you're right.”

“I'm always right, you know,” she says lightly, recovering. “So you might as well listen to me."

"Got it, Granger," he says, oddly solemn, eyes fixed on hers. Then he points behind to their right. “Look, there.”

There’s a kitten there, smaller than Hermione’s hand, and when Malfoy brings her up, out into the light, she curls up and purrs.

 

* * *

 

Something about their conversation haunts Hermione over the next week.

Sure, it's a serious conversation they'd had the last time they’d seen each other, but then, he's always trended towards serious topics with her. She hears him joking with Harry and Ron sometimes, but around her it's all—it's the science of gestures, and working out Muggle international relations, and then all this—other stuff, the jagged parts of him he's revealed that she can’t stop thinking about at night.

What was it Ron asked her last week? Oh yes: _you don't mind him, do you?_

Their conversation replays in her head again. _Hermione_ , he'd said, looking fine. And she’d said—Malfoy.

She sits up, throwing off the covers and rushing downstairs, to that two-toned drawing room, the slate cold flashes beneath her bare feet. Before her nerve fails her, she summons her owl, stroking down its head with one hand, as she scribbles a note.

_Want to meet for lunch?_

The reply is back within the hour—seems he’s a late sleeper too. Malfoy's hand is long and surprisingly free of flourishes.

_Of course. When?_

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn't mean to be late, but between the shoes and the dress and the last check in the mirror, trying to look like she's not trying at all when she's trying very hard, and wondering if it'll be strange—but then, she _can't_ be wrong, can she?—she's nearly a quarter of an hour late.

He's in the corner, the best table, really, where you can look down both streets through the beautiful, curved windows. But he’s not people-watching; he’s turning his wand over in his hands, his face set in a frown.

"Malfoy," she says—and he looks up, with a start, and there's a tick at his throat, as he swallows. "I brought you something."

It's the German chocolates he brought to Molly's once, explaining he'd always liked them as a kid.

"These are the ones, yes?" she says. "Draco?"

He's staring at the box, and then he closes his hand over hers, around the box, and looks up, eyes bright.

"Sometimes,” she says, “I pay attention, too.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My prompt was candy canes.
> 
> Thank you my beta readers, to the kind souls who nominated me, and to esgeee and Musyc for running this fest every year. Have a wonderful holiday season, my dear fellow dramione lovers! <3


End file.
